Slip of the tongue sees Queen dedicate herself to the United Arab Emirates

The Queen was left red-faced earlier today as she accidentally dedicated herself to the United Arab Emirates in her Diamond Jubilee speech to the Houses of Parliament.

‘We’re honoured’ said UAE President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, ‘but we’re not really sure what we’ll do with her. We don’t really need a royal family. Can we swap her for Manchester United or Arsenal instead?’

‘I don’t know what happened’ the Queen told reporters afterwards. ‘It was fine when I ran through it last night, but when I looked at my script today it looked as though ‘United Kingdom’ had been rubbed out and ‘United Arab Emirates’ written in instead. I don’t understand it – Charles checked it for me this morning and he didn’t tell me there was any problem with it.’